On Schedule, On Budget

Raytheon says it has completed a major development milestone on the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) program, the nation's next-generation meteorological satellite system.

The successful qualification testing of the third software increment for the Command, Control, and Communications Segment (C3S) is a significant step toward declaration of ground-readiness in preparation for the launch of the NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP) satellite.

"The NPOESS program is very pleased that more than 1.7 million lines of code and 40 racks of equipment have been delivered on time, on cost, and meeting our specifications," said John Cunningham, director of the NPOESS Integrated Program Office. "Software cost growth has been a particular challenge for the satellite industry, and the carefully planned reuse of existing code, designed in from the beginning, has allowed this outstanding performance. Congratulations to Raytheon on a job very well done."

The C3S software provides a highly automated and integrated suite of eight subsystems at the new NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Satellite Operations Facility (NSOF), including Mission Management, Command and Control, Enterprise Management, and Data Monitoring and Recovery. The demanding NPOESS data latency and availability requirements are met with a globally distributed architecture with 21 operational sites in 12 countries. The NPOESS operators will manage and control these assets from the NSOF.

The C3S software was developed in three increments, over two years, using an iterative development methodology supported by mature CMMI-level 3 (Capability Maturity Model Integration) compliant processes. The cost-effective and on-time development was facilitated by the use of Raytheon Eclipse(TM) satellite command and control and Equinox(TM) mission management product lines, and operational Raytheon ground systems. This reuse yielded a labor cost savings to the government of 80 percent and significantly reduced the schedule risk inherent in a large-scale software development.

FMI: www.raytheon.com